


Conch

by piratemistress



Series: Pearls [2]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-28
Updated: 2007-04-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:38:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4456898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratemistress/pseuds/piratemistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack is in need of healing, and Elizabeth learns the story of the bullet scars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conch

**Author's Note:**

> (original 2007 a/n) Many thanks to lovely lady_di75 for the intuitive and helpful beta-read, and to artaxastra for steering me toward Savannah a while back, which led to the discovery of the tunnels (real according to what I read) and some Savannah-life of the period, both of which helped inspire this part of Jack's backstory.

  
_Pearl of the conch, Lakshmi incarnate, round, lustrous, beautiful and moon-like, bringer of wealth and all auspicious things, heal us.  
  
_ “There's something quite special down there on the shore,” Elizabeth's mother, Margaret, was saying with her long-fingered hands on her daughter's nine-year-old shoulders, as the coastal wind blew strands of hair out of their faces. “A very special shell. I can see it from here, but I can't climb down given my skirts. Will you fetch it for me?”  
  
“Of course, Mama,” the young Elizabeth answered, gathering her simple muslin skirt in her fist. She was dressed less elegantly than her mother, but someday that would change. Today was a special day, since they were receiving visitors from London, something about her father's future.  
  
“That's my good girl,” Margaret said with a gentle squeeze, turning her head and pointing down toward the beach from where they stood on a grassy outcropping in the rock. Elizabeth glanced up to see her mother's hair wound into a graceful knot, a dark spiral from the center of her head. “It's there - pink and white. Do you see it?”  
  
Elizabeth followed her mother's pointing gesture down to the sand. “Yes, I think so.”  
  
“They say, darling, that some conch shells are very powerful. They have a pearl inside, a beautiful one, and anyone who owns one shall always be wealthy. Go and get it, won't you? It'll be our secret.”  
  
Elizabeth sprinted away and made her way carefully down to the beach. In dreams, of course, months or years can pass in seconds, and that is what happened as she crossed the sand to the conch shell. It was quite unusual, large as her hand, and Elizabeth had never seen anything like it. She examined the gentle spiral radiating from the center of the top, tracing it with a forefinger.  
  
She looked up, and her mother was gone. Some part of her knew, because she'd had the dream before, that she was off in one of her melancholy spells, sobbing quietly in her room or sleeping, or perhaps making her way down to the pond in which she would end her own life. It was the primary reason Elizabeth hated to cry; she avoided tears at all costs, the water of the soul that drowned her mother.  
  
Elizabeth traced the light brown spiral on the shell again, and wondered if that's what the ripples looked like as they closed over her mother's head, her inky hair swirling around in the water.  
  
Then she lifted the conch to her ear and closed her eyes, listening to the ocean inside of it. It whispered, it roared. It pounded, fiercely as a heart. It was deafening, and she felt herself slipping away.  
  
Her eyes shot open. The pounding was real. Someone was knocking on her door.  
  
“Who is it?” Elizabeth whispered, alarmed. Knocks in the middle of the night were bad signs. Fires. Deaths. The city under attack.  
  
“It's Paula, miss. Please, may I come in?”  
  
Elizabeth sat up a little ways. Servants didn't normally need permission to come in her room; but she supposed she'd been too harsh with poor Paula, the most recent incarnation of her lady's maid, and she'd frightened her. “What is it?”  
  
Paula opened the door and slipped in, closing it behind her. “Miss, you've got to come downstairs right away. There's a visitor.”  
  
“A visitor?” Elizabeth repeated, dumbfounded. She'd had a midnight visitor in the past, but he didn't announce himself to the servants, and she wasn't expecting any visitors of that sort regardless, given what had happened before. And any official visitors would certainly have called during the day. She remained incredulous. “Who is it?”  
  
“A man,” Paula said in her Jamaican lilt. “A man name of Gibbs. The back entrance - by the kitchen.”  
  
A slight shiver began to edge its way down Elizabeth's spine despite the warm night. Gibbs meant Jack. But Jack did his visiting himself, or sent his messages with anonymous boys; Gibbs's presence might not bode well at all. “Say nothing to anyone,” Elizabeth said sternly, pulling her legs out of the bed. “Find me something dark to wear.”  
  
* *  
  
Gibbs handed her up from the longboat, everything quiet and sloshing in the darkness. Elizabeth tried to take a deep breath to quell the cold fear that had settled in her chest. It didn't help.  
  
Gibbs had been holding his hat in his hand when she met him in a dark hallway by kitchen. “Lassie, ye'd best come with me,” he said soberly. “I've enough coin to pay the servants not to say you've been out. He's asking fer ye.”  
  
“Risk ruin, for him?” she replied, summoning bravado. “His behavior toward me has been awfully careless of late. When we last parted a year ago I felt I'd be lucky never to see him again. What's he want with me, now?”  
  
“He's been in a fight. A deal gone sour, something about an elephant tusk, he couldn't even explain the half of it to me.”  
  
“A... did you say a _tusk_?” Elizabeth replied, trying to remember why it sounded familiar. Gibbs nodded, and she said, “Well... and?”  
  
Gibbs only looked at her, sadly, and she felt her previous shiver deepen into a chill. “He's sword-skewered real bad, Miss Elizabeth, right in the gut. Fevered, too. Delirious, as men at death's door often are. He asked me to send for you, and so here I am. I reckon, he may think you can help him by your very presence... but I believe he wanted to be sure he... took his leave of ye, while he could.”  
  
She crossed the deck behind Gibbs, nearly trembling in all her limbs. She held her head erect, even as she passed Bootstrap in the shadows. Will's father seemed to glare at her, and not without good reason, she supposed.  
  
Gibbs opened the door for her. A single candle burned in the cabin, and everywhere was the smell of blood and unwashed linen. Sweat, too. She approached the bed gingerly, afraid of what she would see. She turned to see if Gibbs was behind her, but he only gave her a somber nod and closed the door, leaving them alone.  
  
Jack lay bare to the waist, a bandage wrapped broadly around his midsection with an ominous brown stain upon it. His face was pale but sweat dotted his brow and nose. His breathing was labored, and Elizabeth stared at the entire scene, feeling shock transform into fear that immobilized her for a moment. When she recovered, she spied a washbasin to one side and quickly went to it, dipping in the worn cloth and wringing it, walking back to stand beside the bed, and touched it lightly along Jack's scalding hot brow. He moaned and his eyes flicked open halfway. She could see why they thought he was dying. He might very well be.  
  
“Mmmwell, you came. That's something,” he muttered, closing his eyes again. “Though I 'spose you can't refuse a dying man's last wish.”  
  
“I suppose you had to pretend to be at death's door so I'd see you.” She stood to reach the washbowl across the bed and plunged the rag back inside.  
  
“Why, I am dying... the Pearly Gates appear before me very eyes,” he said, staring blankly down the front of her dress as she leaned over him, which did not escape her notice as she glanced down at him.  
  
“Pearly Gates? _You_? Perhaps you _are_ delirious,” she said, settling down beside him. “You're a bit warm. But you're not dying,” she said, lie or not, pressing the cloth to his forehead and cheeks again. “It's only this fever you've got to get past. The doctor told Gibbs you would be fine after that.”  
  
Jack gave a cough that might have been a laugh. “Indeed... it won't hurt anymore once I'm dead.” In a clumsy movement, he snatched hold of her left hand, examined her fingers. “So you didn't marry Smelly, after all. Glad to have that question answered before I die.”  
  
“You must have known that, since you sent for me in Port Royal.” She searched the room with her eyes, unsuccessfully, for a chair. She elected to perch beside him on the bed as she continued to touch the cloth to his jaw, his neck. “At any rate,” she continued more calmly than she felt, “you aren't allowed to die until you've told me at least two more stories, per our agreement.”  
  
Jack's eyelids lifted again, slowly, as though they were made of iron and not skin. “I'm on my deathbed, and you want stories?”  
  
“Can't have them after your death, can I?” Elizabeth said, leaning away to glance down at the bandage, which was yellow and brown with dried blood amidst the white layers of fabric. It reminded her of the folds of the conch. She thought if she could keep him conscious, talking, he'd be less likely to slip back into the delirium Gibbs had described. She brushed her nails lightly across the shiny bullet scars on his chest. “Besides, you've cheated death before.”  
  
“More times than I can count,” he murmured, turning his head so that it rested deeply in the center of a pillow. “Th' last two stories are both about women and near-fatal accidents. Picky-picky - pearls, or bullets.”  
  
She cast her eyes over him in the candlelight, subconsciously memorizing every nuance of his appearance, though her mind had not yet permitted her to actually believe he could really die. Not her Jack, she thought. And though she was more interested by far in the story of the pearls, given what they'd meant, she thought he might cling to life more strongly if he still had an important story left untold; so she opted for the bullets, keeping the pearls for later. “Tell me how you've cheated the pistols.”  
  
“Twas only one pistol - least, I think so,” he muttered.  
  
“Step to, Captain, I haven't got all night,” she said, fluffing up a pillow behind him and helping him to sit up a bit more.  
  
He chuckled just a little, before parting his lips to take a deep breath. “Now, there's some parts of this story you're not going to like... and I'm not thinking clearly just now, so I don't know how much sense it's going to make.”  
  
“Just get on with it,” she said, and against her better judgment, leaned over and lay next to him, without regard for dress, bodice, layers or shoes. She curled her body against him, just close enough to draw comfort from him without making him too warm.  
  
As she listened, his words and images blended together and sometimes he had to go back to an earlier part and add something... at times he drifted off and she had to prompt him, other times he seemed to lose his breath and sweat profusely and she got up to mop off his face again, to lower the fever. It was not a story with a beginning, middle, and end, but a sort of knot, with a center and then lots of string wrapped around it. In her mind she untangled it and smoothed it out, as she listened and prodded to keep him awake, and cooled his brow. She considered praying, when she sensed tremors in Jack's extremities, taking that to be a bad sign, though she didn't really think any proper God would listen to her, any more. But she listened to Jack, and tried to unwind the confusing bits of narrative into something that made sense.  
  
  
Savannah, he had said, though not until halfway through the tale. Months before the mutiny.  
  
Jack and the crew had come into some hard-won gold, and didn't wish to advertise where they'd gotten it. He decided they ought to pay a visit to the Colonies, pick up some supplies while they were there, and take some time to enjoy a new tavern they'd heard talk about up and down the coast. He said he possessed something else special, something he wanted to hide away safely for the future. The pearls, Elizabeth concluded, though he didn't confirm that until later.  
  
When they arrived, docking in river, and disembarked, the port was bustling. It was a British colony, but Jack, Bootstrap and a few other comrades heard a number of languages among the sailors, merchants, porters and whores clustered in the streets: Spanish, French, Portuguese, a snippet or two of Yiddish. Barbossa would remain on board the _Pearl_ until Jack returned and they would trade, so there was always someone looking out for bounty hunters, the Navy, assorted soldiers or rival pirates.  
  
Jack entered the lovely wood tavern, taking comfort in its tiny spaces and dim lighting. The men who'd accompanied him found a separate table. In port, he didn't often drink with the men - particularly since, in port, he was often looking for women. When he said this to Elizabeth, he looked as if he would add something to that, but decided not to. He ordered a nice drink of rum. They had that in Savannah, too.  
  
His rum was brought in a tankard by a lovely, shapely dark-haired lass whose appeal Elizabeth was sure he understated as much as possible. “Here's your drink,” she said upon bringing him the second or third glass.  
  
“How much?” Jack said, lifting his eyes along her plump, ivory arm to where it disappeared in her liquor-splotched white sleeve.  
  
“Why, same as the others before. Are you pirates all daft?” she said, wrinkling her pretty brow and propped the tray against her hip.  
  
“I meant,” said Jack, dropping the coins for the liquor on the table, but looking at her, “for you.”  
  
The girl blushed - actually blushed red, a rare sight in a tavern girl. “You're mistaken - I'm not for sale. Try one of the other girls. The blonde one, there.”  
  
Jack smiled, showing ivory and gold teeth alike, leaning back in the wooden booth. He enjoyed nothing so well as a challenge. “I prefer brunettes.”  
  
“Yes - well I prefer feather beds, but that don't mean I get one,” she retorted.  
  
“Your time with me would be more lucrative - and more entertaining - than your paltry bar tips,” he said in a smooth, even tone.  
  
“Ah, but carrying drinks 's honest work,” she replied. “Unlike entertaining you.”  
  
“Honesty's overrated.”  
  
“So's that 'entertainment.'”  
  
He reached out to brush her arm with his fingers, and she turned wide eyes upon him. She was young, still. “Come, love, I'll throw in lots of tips - just for a little conversation, eh? When you pass by?”  
  
“Talking? That's all?”  
  
He raised a palm and made a very solemn face. She looked around, then slipped into the booth opposite him. “I can't stay long - Master Croydon won't want me to waste time when we're busy.”  
  
Jack dropped a silver coin on the table. “Tell me your name, darling,” he purred in a tone women had long been unable to resist. This one didn't, either.  
  
“Helen,” she said, and he noticed a smattering of light freckles across her pert nose and round, rosy cheeks. He thought her adorable. Then he thought of a number of salacious possibilities for that adorable face, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.  
  
“With a face that launched a thousand ships,” he said with a saucy smile.  
  
“Only one, actually,” she answered, examining her work-roughened hands. “M' father took off to sea when I was a girl.”  
  
Jack refrained from observing that she was only a few years past 'girl' now. “It couldn't have been because of _you_.”  
  
“Don't suppose I'll ever know. He'll write, every so often, or send me trinkets - or he used to, before Mum and I came to Georgia. I haven't seen much of him since.”  
  
“Lonely for a man's company, are you?” Jack said, leaning forward with a mischievous smile.  
  
“I - I have to go,” she suddenly said, sliding out and standing up. “The other customers.”  
  
“Just say hello when you pass by again,” Jack said, lifting a hand to bring one of her hands to his lips. When he kissed the back of it, she blushed even more and yanked her hand away, flouncing off the serve more drinks. He preferred it this way. He'd paid whores before, but willing women were always more satisfying as a conquest. And cheaper, in the long run.  
  
He watched her as she served drinks to others, made a number of trips to the bar and around the room. He admired her shining dark hair, her ready smile, the lush curve of her backside, not to mention her full, round breasts.  
  
Elizabeth was not so very fond of that part.  
  
When Helen returned to refresh his drink again, he dropped an extra coin on the table, and she glanced around hurriedly before she sat down. “I wouldn't even speak to you if I weren't short on the rent for me and Mama this week,” she explained, reaching out to pocket the coins. “What now?”  
  
He began to lean forward, very slowly and deliberately, and he was sure she thought he was going to kiss her, and even closed her eyes in anticipation, before he gently fingered the tiny conch shell she wore on a leather cord around her neck. “A lovely sea-locket,” he said, watching as her eyelashes fluttered and her cheeks pinkened. He was distracted by her reaction to him, or else he might have thought about why the image of a tiny conch nestled in a large man's hand struck an oddly familiar chord with him.  
  
“Th-thank you,” she said.  
  
It took him most of the evening with this sort of back and forth flirting to get anywhere with her, but he did succeed. Hours later he grabbed her arm and pulled her close, pressing the remainder of his coin into her hand. “Give this to your barmaid friend and tell her to cover for you, and we'll continue our conversation in private - upstairs?”  
  
She said nothing but lowered her eyes, taking the coin, and Jack nonchalantly climbed the stairs to the inn's rooms while no one was watching. He was rather drunk or he would have remembered that he only climbed one set of stairs to the second floor and not two to reach the third, a detail that would prove important later. It only _seemed_ like more stairs because they kept moving when he tried to put his feet on them.  
  
There were lots of rooms - he opened the door to one he hoped was empty. It was dark and the bed made, so he assumed it was. In a moment he heard hesitant footsteps on the stairs and in the hall, and he leaned out and pulled the nervous-looking Helen into the darkened room, shutting the door.  
  
“Well,” he drawled, trailing a finger down her neck and face, watching as her breath quickened. “let's begin the entertainment, shall we?”  
  
Elizabeth didn't much care for that part of the story, either.  
  
Jack hurried through much of the details regarding her flowing black hair, her heaving bosoms, etc., etc., until he got to the part where he raised her skirts around her waist while leaning her against the door.  
  
“Helen, darling, you're so tense,” he commented while dropping his breeches, as he nestled himself between her pleasantly plump thighs.  
  
“I- I can't help it,” she said, sighing as he pressed kisses to her neck. “I haven't done this before.”  
  
He raised his head. “You mean, snuck upstairs when you're supposed to be serving?”  
  
“Well, that. And - well, this. You know.”  
  
A twinge of alarm went through Jack, as he realized the reason for the blushing, the shyness, the nerves. She wasn't an unusually coquettish barmaid. She was an innocent barmaid. Which was quite unusual.  
  
He thought about setting her down and bidding her good night, but it had been a long time since he'd been with a woman and he was quite far gone for arousal and drunkenness, and thought his chances poor elsewhere. So he compromised. He would still have her, but a little more nicely.  
  
“In that case,” he murmured to her, “why don't we use the bed? Might make things easier.”  
  
She agreed. He walked her to the bed and removed his breeches entirely, tossing them on the floor. He lay his sword beside them, and put his gun within easy reach on the nightstand. Then he spread her out across the bed, insinuating himself between her legs again. All in all it went well, everything aboveboard, minimum of pain and screaming and enough pleasure for both of them, which was not bad considering the obstacles. When they were done he drew her up next to him, pressing kisses along her face until he got to the necklace again, which she still wore.  
  
“Where did you say you'd gotten this?” he mused, nibbling at her neck under the cord, which elicited a giggle.  
  
“My father sent it to me a long time ago, from some faraway place. Wherever he sailed to with that filthy bunch of pirates.”  
  
Jack opened his mouth to take exception, more to her tone than the words, when he was again assailed by that niggling sense of deja-vu. But he was once again distracted by matters at hand, and soon said, “If you don't hate me too much for despoiling you, I'll come and visit you the next time I'm in Savannah. I rather like it, you know? Friendly people.”  
  
She laughed, from his hand tickling her leg and his words. “Oh, don't worry. Think there might be only one man I truly hate.”  
  
“Not pirate-loving Papa?”  
  
“No. But I'd like to get my hands on the captain he sailed with. I'm sure there was a trick involved. And my mother's heart was broken.”  
  
He said nothing, for that, too, was unfortunately familiar - many crewmen had joined up for less than honest reasons; gambling debts, vendettas, arrest warrants. Some simply couldn't stand the family life. “With a girl as lovely as you at home,” Jack said as somberly as possible, “I'm sure whoever solicited your father into service had to be as tricksy and serpentine as they come.”  
  
At that moment, the bell behind the bar downstairs began to ring. Helen sat straight up the bed. “Oh, no! That's the signal of a raid. Quick - you've got to get out of here.”  
  
Jack wasted no time in asking who was doing the raiding - he assumed British soldiers, since Savannah had become a bit notorious, piratically speaking, of late. He jumped up and scrambled for his breeches, all the while shouts sounded downstairs and the bell continued to ring. “D'you have a back door?” he asked the rapidly-buttoning Helen.  
  
“Yes - but there's something better,” she said. “We have a tunnel. It leads to the river - out the rum cellar. But you have to make it downstairs.”  
  
Jack heard numerous footsteps on the stairs, then, and figured he didn't have time just then to go back down. He eyed the window, then marched over and threw it open. He looked down to see the alley within jumping distance. He could hear men shouting, but he wasn't sure of they were only on the stairs and or in the hall... he snatched up his sword, and then took the pistol and pressed it quickly into Helen's hand. “Listen,” he said, cocking the pistol. “You have two shots. I want you to shoot whoever comes through that door.”  
  
He rather thought she'd miss any entering soldier given how badly her hands were shaking, but it might distract them long enough for him to escape... and should any lout of a British convict-turned-soldier get any ideas about having his way with her, it might save her that, too. He kissed her on the cheek and then ran to the window and tossed a leg over the sill, then the other, and then hung by his hands and dropped, only somewhat painfully, to the alley. It wasn't the first time he'd snuck out of a second-story window.  
  
When he stood, brushing himself off in the dark, he was surprised to hear someone say, “Hssst! Jack!”  
  
He peered into the dark, and then Barbossa's face became visible, as he materialized from the shadows across the alley. “This place's crawling with red,” he hissed, as he took quick, broad steps toward Jack, “we have to get back to the _Pearl_ , I came down to get the others an hour ago! What were ye doing?”  
  
Both of them flattened themselves against the tavern wall as another phalanx of soldiers marched past in the alley. “I was debauching a virgin, thoroughly, too,” Jack remarked in a quiet tone, scanning the street. “Takes a bit longer than everyone expects.”  
  
“Willing?” Barbossa said with a leer.  
  
Jack cocked his head, thinking. “Willing enough.”  
  
“Bet she had a sweet little tunnel, didn't she?”  
  
“I'll fill you in on the details later, mate, but speaking of tunnels - I think I know what we have to do,” Jack said, inching along the wall until he rounded the back corner. Barbossa followed. “We have to get back in the tavern and down to the rum cellar.”  
  
“Jack! Now's no time to be thinking o' drink!”  
  
Jack glared through lowered eyelids at his first mate. “There's a _tunnel_ out of the cellar. Goes to the river.”  
  
Barbossa clapped him on the shoulder. “Ye old dog! Lead the way.”  
  
They found the back entrance of the tavern easily enough, and peered through it. It seemed everyone had cleared out of the kitchen, and they crept in and down a hall till they came to a door in the floor. Jack glanced around to make sure the coast was clear before he lifted the door.  
  
He and Barbossa were halfway down the steps when Barbossa said, “Let's just hope those scalawags on the _Pearl_ are waiting for us.”  
  
He was about to retort that they'd _better_ wait for the captain and first mate, if they wanted to live, when the mention of the _Pearl_ conjured up an image in his mind. The pearls. He thrust his fingers into his pocket as he jogged down the stairs, just to be sure.  
  
They weren't there. “Bugger!”  
  
Barbossa had run ahead of him, and poked his head back around a corner to see what the trouble was. “What?”  
  
“The bloody damn pearls,” Jack replied with a sinking feeling. “Must have fallen out in the room. Buggering hell!”  
  
“Best leave 'em, Jack,” Barbossa said with a sneer. “Let's go!”  
  
“Can't, they're my lucky pearls!”  
  
“They won't be lucky if they get ye arrested!” Barbossa said, marching resolutely across the cellar to pull Jack's arm. “Forget 'em! Move it, now.”  
  
“You go on, mate,” Jack said, shaking himself free. “I'll be right behind you.”  
  
As he turned and ran back up the steps, two at a time, he heard Barbossa bellow, “ _Jack_! Ye madman!”  
  
Jack slid along the wall in the hallway that led from the kitchen to the tavern room, and saw several soldiers ushering men outside. One officer was shouting and pointing, and the bar's proprietor - Master Croydon, Jack presumed - was hollering at a soldier, red in the face. Jack began to think the Colonies weren't much better than the Caribbean, far as peace, quiet and piracy. Still hospitable folk, though.  
  
When no one was watching he quickly ducked up the first flight of stairs, and another set, hoping not to meet any soldier along the way. When he entered the dark hall he put his back to the wall again, approaching the third door on the right. “Psst, Helen, it's me,” he whispered. “Don't shoot.”  
  
There was no answer. Jack heard footsteps on the lower part of the stairs. “I'm coming in,” he whispered, throwing open the door.  
  
Silence. Darkness. She was not there. He took a few more steps inside, and then knelt to feel along the floor, slowly and carefully. If they'd fallen out of his breeches pocket, they'd be right here on the floor... after five full minutes and a thorough search, nothing. And he was certain he'd picked the third room.  
  
He began to think the greedy little bar wench helped herself to his pearls. In his supreme annoyance, he stood and threw open the door without any caution, and came face to face with a Redcoat, whose eyes also widened in shock.  
  
Jack recovered first, pushing the young man so hard he fell into the wood-paneled opposite wall, and he took off down the hallway. He heard the man shout and then heard footfalls behind him. Jack hit the stairs and leapt down them, two at a time, one whole flight. When he passed the landing he saw another soldier at the bottom. That soldier wasn't looking at him, but he would be soon enough.  
  
Jack swung himself around in a wide arc, jumping back up two steps to the second floor landing. He took off down that hallway, knowing his only advantage was to hide, since it would take them a while to search all the rooms. First he ran toward the end, then thought, No! They'll expect me to hide close to the end. Have to make them pass me, so I can dash out to the stairs. He spun around several times with his arms out, unsure which room to pick, feeling a bit dizzy. Had he had _that_ much rum? Finally he settled on one to his left, and threw open the door.  
  
There was an extremely loud _bang_ that resonated in his head. He stared in disbelief at the open door - had he flung it open so hard?  
  
Then a woman screamed. Helen, he realized, and then he was stumbling backward and sitting on the floor, as though someone had pushed him. The girl came running out and knelt beside him, putting the pistol on the floor. “I'm sorry! I'm sorry! You said - oh, no!” Her hands were fluttering over his shirt, in the vicinity of a crimson stain spreading over his ribcage. He regarded it dazedly.  
  
“You shot me,” he said, as if he couldn't believe it.  
  
Helen burst into tears, then, and he tried to console her, even though he was the one shot. “Don't cry, love, I've had worse - listen, if you want to help me, go in there and find the pearls I've dropped. They're lucky, y'see.”  
  
She nodded and crept back into the room, returning a second or two later with the strand of pearls. She pressed them into his hand, and he clutched them tightly. Truth be told, they weren't helping with the pain, but he had to get back to the ship. After stuffing the pearls in his pocket, he quickly loosened and took off the black sash he usually wore and folded it, pressing it against the wound. “Help me up,” he told her.  
  
“Oh, but you shouldn't be moving!” she cried softly. “I'll get a doctor!”  
  
“No! No,” he insisted, catching her wrist. “I'll be fine as long as you _keep completely quiet_. Now we've got to distract the soldiers so I can get to the tunnel, understand?”  
  
“Oh...” and she burst into weeping again, clutching his head to her ample chest, between her breasts. The thought occurred to him that there were worse ways to die.  
  
Just then, Barbossa appeared around the corner from the stairs. He saw Jack on the floor and strode toward him. “Why, Jack! This must be the lusty maid you... good gracious, Cap'n, are you _shot_?”  
  
Jack described the events of the next minute as occurring perhaps underwater, in a sort of pantomime slowness, as though from a dream. It was partially his shock at the injury, but partially a quicksand sensation of being pulled deeper and deeper. Jack watched Helen's face as Barbossa approached, saw her pink lips part, her mouth drop open in shock, and her eyes widen. One hand flew to her throat, to pinch the small conch between her fingers.  
  
“Papa?” she said in an incredulous whisper.  
  
Jack's eyes flew to Barbossa, next, who had frozen in mid-step and was peering at both of them from the very bottom of his eyes, the whites giant globes, his irises dark swirls of mixed emotions. Then Jack saw those eyes fix on _him_.  
  
In his odd, fear-and-gunshot induced trance, he saw himself striding along a beach with Barbossa, making plans to raid nearby, and saw the man bend down and scoop up a small shell from the sand, years ago. “That's a fine one,” Barbossa had said, tucking the shell into a pocket.  
  
Bloody brain! Jack cursed inwardly. Can't I remember that I know useful things _before_ they get me killed? And then he turned eyes to Helen, who was staring back at him with a look of horror, and he was curious about it since he didn't know what he'd done to _her_. Then it struck him; she was seeing the pirate captain for the first time. The man who'd seduced her father away from her, as she saw it. The man she truly abhorred.  
  
The water-dream ended and Jack landed back in reality, with a single thought: _Better go now_. He somehow sat up, noting that Barbossa was still staring at him in dumbfounded rage, and Helen's shock had melted into anger, too. There was a pistol on the floor, and Barbossa had a pistol and a sword - and Jack wasn't about to find out what the now-reunited family had in store for him once they snapped out of their outraged stupor.  
  
“'M sorry,” he quipped as he struggled to his feet. “I can only say - if I'd known she was yours -“ he glanced at Helen, “or that he was _yours_ \- I'd at least have made sure you never knew about it, eh?”  
  
And he took off down the hallway in a limping run.  
  
He made it to the stairs before he heard Barbossa roar, “ _Jack Sparrow!_ ” and the force of the bellow nearly knocked him down the rest of the way. Somehow he reached the bottom, and noting the guard was gone - most of the soldiers were outside the tavern, now, rounding up their captives - and he made a beeline for the cellar.  
  
The stairs and entry were a blur, and the casks of rum - surprisingly - held no appeal as the pain in his ribs became excruciating. He stumbled down through the stone cellar, and followed a passage to his left. There was a door. He opened it, and found himself in the tunnel.  
  
It was pitch black, but he felt with his hands along a wall, forcing himself to move his feet. He had made his way down the straight tunnel about thirty or forty paces when he heard the creak of the door. He kept going, hoping the darkness would hide him. He knew he had lost blood and he didn't want to pass out in the tunnel underground. That would be the end of him - no one would ever find him.  
  
As it happened - someone had found him, and they were determined to make an end of him. He heard the pistol shot echo up and down the tunnel, and was relieved when silence returned.  
  
Until he felt the stabbing pain below his right shoulder. Before he knew it he'd sunk to his knees, even though his brain was telling him, get up, get up! He leaned forward, putting his hands on the wet ground, and felt warm blood drip onto his fingers. His eyes closed for a moment.  
  
Suddenly he felt something cool and round at his fingertips. One of his hands had worked its way inside a pocket, and grasped the pearls. He slowly returned to his senses. He could live. He only had to get back to the ship - it was perhaps a mile through the tunnel. He could walk it in fifteen minutes. If he were going to die, he thought, it would not be because he'd been made a fool of by some silly _woman_.  
  
 _Naturally not_ , Elizabeth remarked when he reported this. _Least she had enough decency to weep for me_ , Jack replied. _I wept_ , Elizabeth insisted, _just not prematurely.  
  
_ He ignored her jibe and continued the tale: that with renewed determination, he climbed onto one foot, then the other, and began to make his way down the tunnel again, gritting his teeth against the pain. Just when he thought he could go no farther, he began to hear water, and knew he was near the river. He pressed on.  
  
Finally he saw an opening ahead, the night air beyond. He emerged and made his way along the riverbank until he spied the _Pearl_ \- and even better - Bootstrap and another man peering along the docks, looking for him, probably.  
  
He thought he shouted to them before he passed out. In any case, he was vaguely aware of concerned men's voice and being carried aboard, and then heard a voice that roused him: Barbossa's. He was giving orders to make sail, and calling for any man who knew how to extract a ball.  
  
Jack wanted to ask him how he'd gotten back to the ship so fast, but the world was getting blurry and dark. When he thought about it later, he considered three distinct possibilities. One, a soldier had heard him enter the tunnel, followed him, and shot him. Two, Barbossa had followed him and shot him, and then returned to the ship by road.  
  
Or three, that Barbossa had fled, and Helen had surmised where Jack was headed, followed him down, and shot him. Any of the three would be feasible. And it wasn't until after the mutiny that he concluded Barbossa probably didn't plan the mutiny _because_ of Helen, but it probably made it a hell of a lot easier to take his ship and leave him for dead. Greed and power were the causes of the Trojan War, and it fit this Helen, too, Jack explained; she caused a bit of trouble herself, but in truth she was only the spark that lit the blaze.  
  
Elizabeth had already heard some about the mutiny, and so it made a bit more sense. By the time Jack was finished talking it was near four in the morning, and he was sounding more and more tired but somewhat more lucid. She felt his brow, and it was warm, but not as bad as when she'd arrived. Immense relief flooded through her, but she contained her emotion for his sake.  
  
“Your fever's better,” she told him, pressing a kiss to one of his scars. “You may yet live.”  
  
“Go, then,” he muttered, sounding sleepy. “'M so tired.”  
  
“I think I should stay,” she whispered.  
  
“Oh, now you'll stay?” he chuckled softly, bitterly, with much effort. “That's a new tune. Not a chance. This is what I get for a simple bar fight - a sword in the gut. What worse will happen to someone like you? No... go back to your father's, where you're safe.”  
  
She frowned, peering down at him. “You won't let me remain on board? After all that fuss before?”  
  
“I was being a fool... it's too dangerous... get out of here, before the sun's up. I'll rest easy, knowing you're safe at home.”  
  
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she thought she'd have time to argue with him later, not knowing they'd set sail the next day under his orders. She made it back to the house before dawn, with a few more coins (supplied by Gibbs - she rarely carried money) to encourage the servants' cooperation. But had she still been absent from her room by breakfast, no amount of coin would have saved her.  
  
She found the box in a trunk where she kept the conch from her dream, the one that must have floated all the way across the ocean to find her. Water poured from a conch was said to banish evil spirits, her mother had told her, whispering so that her blasphemy would not be overheard. Elizabeth considered returning to the ship that very night - not knowing they were already gone - and imagined dipping the shell in the washbasin, pouring a trickle over his chest and new wound, healing him that way. Yet he always survived the dangers, smoothed them over and got around and made them interesting or funny, even if it wasn't true - and he must have hundreds of pearls hidden in him, one for every grain life had brought his way.  
  
Perhaps that's what he'd done, she thought. Perhaps that was why he seemed to shine, from his eyes and teeth. She pondered other pearly parts of Jack, and her cheeks heated as another thought briefly crossed her mind. Then she put the conch away, and turned to smooth her hair in the mirror. Fool. No amount of magic - or love - would really wash away the dark, the ugly, the frightening, from Jack Sparrow. It was written on his skin, bound within him, and she wished she could create a pearl of her own to smooth things over around Jack himself, who was inside her and around her and fused to her, so that she had no choice but to carry him always with her.  
  



End file.
